More than 80 organisations from all over Europe are calling on the European Commission to outlaw the release of so-called Gene Drive Organisms in the EU and internationally.
Gene drive technology is used to bypass the rules of inheritance in order to accelerate the spread of modified genes across wild populations. It has been termed the “mutagenic chain reaction”, and its effects are currently not reversible.
Any environmental release of Gene Drive Organisms would violate the EU’s GMO directive and would be incompatible with the Commission’s proposed EU strategy on biodiversity protection according to which the EU supports a worldwide commitment for “no human-induced extinction of species”.
The European Parliament has already called on the Commission and EU member states to support a global moratorium on the release of Gene Drive Organisms (GDOs) at the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).